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Book Summary and Reviews of Gandhi by Ramachandra Guha

Gandhi by Ramachandra Guha

Gandhi

The Years That Changed the World, 1914-1948

by Ramachandra Guha

  • Critics' Consensus (4):
  • Published:
  • Oct 2018, 1104 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

The second and concluding volume of the magisterial biography that began with the acclaimed, Gandhi Before India: the definitive portrait of the life and work of one of the most abidingly influential - and controversial - men in world history.

This volume opens with Mohandas Gandhi's arrival in Bombay in January 1915 and takes us through his epic struggles over the next three decades: to deliver India from British rule, to forge harmonious relations between India's Hindu and Muslim populations, to end the pernicious Hindu practice of untouchability, and to develop India's economic and moral self-reliance.

We see how in each of these campaigns, Gandhi adapted methods of nonviolence - strikes, marches, fasts - that successfully challenged British authority, religious orthodoxy, social customs, and would influence non-violent, revolutionary movements throughout the world.

In reconstructing Gandhi's life and work, Ramachandra Guha has drawn on sixty different archival collections, the most significant among them, a previously unavailable collection of papers belonging to Gandhi himself. Using this wealth of material, Guha creates a portrait of Gandhi and of those closest to him - family, friends, political and social leaders - that illuminates the complexity inside his thinking, his motives, his actions and their outcomes as he engaged with every important aspect of social and public life in the India of his time.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"Starred Review. Incisively written, this is a landmark account of Gandhi's engagement with the world he would transform forever." - Publishers Weekly

"Starred Review. Superb. On nearly every page, Guha offers evidence why Gandhi remains relevant in the world 70 years after his death." - Kirkus

"Gandhi Before India, the first volume in Guha's massive biography of Mohandas Gandhi, was a 2014 New York Times Notable Book. Here's the second and concluding volume, which opens when Gandhi arrives in Bombay in January 1915 and, as the subtitle indicates, sweeps through the earthshaking nonviolent revolution he set off that changed not just India but the world." - Library Journal

This information about Gandhi was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

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Author Information

Ramachandra Guha

Ramachandra Guha has previously taught at Yale and Stanford universities, the University of Oslo, the Indian Institute of Science, and the London School of Economics. His books include a pioneering environmental history, an award-winning social history of cricket, and the award-winning India After Gandhi.He writes regularly on social and political issues for the British and Indian press, including columns in The Telegraph and the Hindustan Times, and also for The New York Times.

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